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2013/05/26

I recently did an interview with Steve Quenell for Monolith magazine. Quenell is an excellent neo-psychedelic artist based in Seattle. He's done album artwork for The Black Angels, The Warlocks and Black Mountain, amongst others. You can read the interview here

2013/05/14

The
talk on poetry and swarms (see previous post ) concluded with a reference to the film Phase IV (1974) directed by Saul Bass.
Bass was best known as a pioneering designer of title sequences (Hitchcock,
Preminger) and Phase IV is the only
film he directed. It was written by Mayo Simon, who would later go on to pen
the screenplay for Richard T. Hafflin’s Futureworld
(1976).

Focusing on a threatening accumulation of ants in the Arizona desert, the film ostensibly works as
part of the sub-genre of loosely ‘ecological’ horror films that proliferated in
the 1970s. Night
of the Lepus (1972), Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), Empire
of the Ants (1977) and The Swarm (1978) amongst many others, posited a revolt of ‘nature’ against the
human world and its attendant forms of ecological exploitation: urban growth,
pollution, environmentally damaging experimentation and destructive profiteering.
In essence, these films took the imagery of the Cold War radiation fantasy Them!
(1954) and combined it with a different criteria of otherness and a less overt (but
nonetheless resonant) internal agenda. Paranoia remained in the 1970s as cinema’s
primary fear reflex but having adjusted its image of monstrosity from aliens
and communists to animals and insects, this fear no longer emanated from the borderlands Instead it was located in nature itself, that which is immanent,
proximate and ambivalent.

The
production of Phase IV no doubt benefited from this contemporary fixation but ideologically, the film was very
different from the work of Irwin Allen and Bert I. Gordon. This difference was
a source of its failure at the time of its initial release but has equally has
become the source of its current cult appeal. The film’s promotional poster
suggests that it works as a fairly conventional insect-related horror movie.
All the tropes are there: images of human peril, malevolent ants, and a
hyperbolic, funereal tag line, “The day the earth was turned into a cemetery!”[1]

However,
this depiction only relates to one scene in the film. It also does nothing to
connote its scientific, almost anthropological tone. (One wonders what the
image would have been like if Bass, himself a graphic designer, had of been in
charge of the publicity campaign.) In contrast to the binary hysterics of Empire of the Ants, Phase IV owes much more to the clinical, institutional detachment
of early Cronenberg, particularly Stereo
(1969) and Crimes of the Future
(1970). As with the extensive body horror Cronenberg would go onto perpetuate,
these works propose something of a posthuman agenda whereby the human body is
rendered obsolete in the face of a research trajectory that attempts to
articulate and manifest new forms of consciousness: telepathic, physical and
sexual. Similarly, Phase IV uses the
idea of the ants as a ‘hive-mind’ to depict a collective, constellate
intelligence. This entity is not without offensive potential that offers a
violent threat to the human form, but as the film concludes, the title
implication becomes clear. Bass and Simon do not end with flame-throwers and a
renewed attempt to prevent further invasion, as in both Them! and The Swarm but
hint that the swarm structure of the ants represents a further ‘phase’ of
organic life in which homo sapiens can participate.

At
least, this was Bass and Simon’s initial
intention. When Phase IV was first
released, its preview length of 93 minutes was cut down to 84. Amongst the
material excised by the distributor was a 4 minute montage sequence that closed
the film.

Coming after the line, “they wanted us” this conclusion suggests that
the emergence of the ant swarm signals the start of an evolutionary tribulation
for the 2 surviving characters. Bass’s imagery combines the dystopian with the
tyrannical as well as symbols of transformation, transcendence and psychedelic
expansion. In the cut version, this conclusion is significantly more
explicatory. “They wanted us”, we are told, to become part of “their world”.
Here, the visionary range of the original ending is lost in favour of a
conclusion that veers more towards a negative re-telling of the 1950s monster
scenario.

It appears as if the “transformation” hinted at is a surrender of the
human form to the monstrosity of the ants. By contrast, in the original
version, whilst the transformation depicted is not without trauma, that which
is projected is far from a terminal phase.Bass and Simon seem to point towards a state of posthuman hybridity,
more redolent of the transitions seen in J.G. Ballard than a capitulation to
the eco-apocalypse scenarios posited in the likes of George McCowans’s Frogs (1972):

I
know now that I shall return to the Everglades.
As the example of that brave apostate
priest who gave the cross to me illustrates, there is an immense reward to be found in that frozen forest. There in the
everglades, the transfiguration of all living and
inanimate forms occurs before our eyes, the gift
of immortality a direct consequence
of the surrender by each of us of our own physical and temporal identity. However apostate we may be in
this world, there perforce we become apostles
of the prismatic sun.[2]

The
lost ending of Phase IV was recently
restored for a special screening at the Alamo Drafthouse on December 1, 2012.
This was a mere 20 days before the projected end of the world. That this ending
should emerge at this time speaks volumes about its original intention. If Phase IV carries an apocalyptic
sensibility, it is an apocalypse in the sense of a process of ‘revealing’;
something to be sought out rather than defended against.

[1] Compare
this with the tagline of Kingdom of Spiders,
“A living, crawling, Hell on earth!”

2013/05/04

On Tuesday 7th May, I'll be speaking at the 20th Century & Contemporary Literature Graduate Seminar.

Insect Traffic: Notes on Poetry and Swarm Activity

With reference to work by John Kinsella and Nick Flynn, this
paper will discuss the image and concept of 'the swarm'. The word
describes insect, animal and human processes of active accumulation, signifying
by extension a state of diffuse uniformity: identity as constellation.
Although it carries an extensive etymology, 'swarm' has acquired a
persistent currency in late 20th and early 21st century critical, cultural and
literary theory. From ecocriticism to web politics; from the Occupy movement
to slime dynamics, 'swarm' has been employed as a marker of a
de-centralised, non-hierarchical and yet intentional entity of thought,
movement and particularly activism. With this discursive context in mind,
this paper will look at some recent poetic appearances of the term.
Taking a speculative viewpoint, the aim will be to assess the
efficacy of the word 'swarm' as a tool of poetic activism.

About Me

Strange Dimensions: A Paranthropology Anthology

Collection of essays edited by Jack Hunter features my essay on William Burroughs, magick and recording technology. Available now.

Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts

Annotated screenplay text with archival dossier, unpublished writings and a series of new essays. Nohzone Archive.

Framework 52: Things Fall Apart.

2 volume set of texts, documents, extracts, photographs and essays covering the life and work of Peter Whitehead. Available now from Wayne State University Press.

Selections from the Nohzone Archive.

Collection of rare photographs and previously unpublished documents covering the production of Peter Whitehead's films between 1965 and 1969. Part of the digital resource collection 'Rock n Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest'. Available now from Adam Matthew Digital.

Crash Cinema: Representation in Film

Collection of essays edited by Mark Goodall, Jill Good and Will Godfrey featuring my essay on Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962). Available now from Cambridge Scholar's Press.

Telegraph for Garlic

Collection of essays on Bram Stoker's Dracula edited by Samia Ounoughi that features my essay on Dracula and phonography. Available now from Red Rattle Books.